Too much of everything

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

The story goes as follows: a beautiful hirsute blonde, named Lila and played by Arquette, upset by her work experience in a circus' freak show, runs away from society and becomes a famous writer. However, due to sexual urges, she decides to undergo painful (and extremely lengthy) electrolysis on her whole body, to find a sexual partner.During what one can only imagine as extremely tedious and painful epilation sessions, her beautician mentions a screwed-up scientist, who no woman in her right mind could possibly find attractive. For mysterious reasons, Lila is intrigued, met him and falls in love. Unfortunately, electrolysis having not worked its miracles yet, Lila must continue shaving her body regularly. She is keeping her condition a secret and when she moves in with scientist boyfriend Nathan – played by an unbearable Tim Robbins – her secret becomes hard to keep.At this stage, the weird couple runs into a wild ape-man (named Puff) and they decide to take him back to Nathan's lab and train him to behave. It must be noted that the main experiment carried out by Nathan was teaching rats to use the correct fork while eating sitting at a table. Honestly, you cannot make this stuff up…After some idiotic antics involving a slutty lab assistant, Lila gets dumped because her body hair is still not completely gone. So she kidnaps Puff and moves back into the forest, to live naked and happily hereafter with the ape-man.Unfortunately Nathan decides he wants Lila back, despite having moved in with the slutty lab assistant. Tragedy ensues, but honestly who cares? Not a single one of these characters has any lovable (or believable) feature. Starting from the hairy Lila (why would any actress play this part is beyond my understanding), to the sadistic Nathan who wants to teach rats how to use forks, not to mention ape-man Rhys Ifans, afflicted by serious masturbatory problems.The last - but foremost - question I have is the same asked by another reviewer: how does stuff like this get financed? Seriously, who wants to invest in this type of material?

I really loved it, when I watched it for the first time. But when I had to re-watch a couple of years later (it was some sort of Sneak at a local cinema), I just couldn't laugh as much. But the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The movie is actually good, it just has a few flaws, that you might see when you watch it for the first time. And therefor maybe you should only watch it once and stay onto the good feelings you had for this movie.It is greatly acted and the jokes hit the mark. Cleverly written and nicely directed (by Mr. Gondry who I adore very much), this has a very unique story to it. If you know Gondry, you know more or less what to expect (more or less everything alas not as greatly balanced as his more recent work).

Unlike the other works from Charlie Kaufman- Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind- Human Nature doesn't leave the sort of unbelievable cinematic residue that stays for days and week and even years afterward. It's a work that is low-key even as it's insanely zany in spurts and totally tuned into a comedic frequency that only works for the casual viewer sometimes. But even a lesser work from the likes of Michel Gondry and Kaufman registers higher in a way that comedies with lower ambitions couldn't dream to aspire to. It has some conventionality to it, with its love triangle between Dr. Nathan Bronfman (Tim Robbins), Lila (Patricia Arquette), and Gabrielle (Miranda Otto) that ends up tearing apart the characters to question who they are (aside from Gabrielle). Yet that's not really totally at concern, though it probably has somewhere to figure into the whole idea of what makes for truth in human nature. One might argue, after seeing the film, it has something to do with individualism...actually, if we go by Kaufman's interpretation, it has to do with orgasms.Told in quasi-Rashomon style (with the law and the afterlife, as in Rashomon, figuring into Human Nature as well), Bronfman has an interest in teaching mice table manners when we first meet him (one of the film's funniest recurring images/scenes), and gets set up on a date with Lila, who's a writer of nature stories (from personal experience, due to an abnormal hair condition as a child she decides to live in the wild after an unsuccessful stint at a side-show). She decides to conform for him, hiding the fact that she's a hairy "ape" from the wild, as he hides his compulsion for manners and proper behavior. Enter in "Puff" (Rhys Ifans, in one of his funniest roles/performances yet), who gets that name by Gabrielle, Nathan's assistant at work, and an adoptive mother to Nathan being adoptive father. Now it will be time to really go further with Nathan's research- to teach one who's been in the wild always to be a proper, educated human. This proves to be a challenge, as Puff can't resist the urge to hump whenever aroused, and is around the sexual explosion that erupts between Nathan and Gabrielle- the love triangle that unfolds that may spell as foreshadowing for Puff later on in the story...And so on. You might get just the slight sense- scratch that, overwhelming impression- that this is not you're average tale of what it means to be an ape-man and become 'civlized'. It's a whacked-out comedy of manners and sexuality, where one's own soul becomes more of a question then what is really meant to be proper or what not. Actually, there is some interest in how Nathan figures into this as well- he's the least human of all, at least for the most part, as he loses himself in his pursuit of science, with Lila losing hers alongside. So Kaufman does end up working some very interesting characters here, and the situations and little notes that pop up are about as irreverent as he's ever done. The problem is it ends up un-even too: little things are left un-checked, as to Gabrielle possibly not being really French (it's put in as a possible note of her being untruthful as well, but it's never addressed again, or her motives of anything, even as Otto plays the character well enough), or the psychology that emerges from Puff himself. Does he just want to "have some of that" as he says to the committee, or does he get too adjusted to his surroundings.However what holes or problems might lie in the screenplay, there's no denying the bright strengths just in general working in Human Nature. Who would think up such a strange concept, leaping bravely off of Truffaut's Wild Child into a sort of common theme in Kaufman's work so far? Kaufman would, especially as it's part of the need to feel like someone else, or what it must be to try to be something one can't really be through insecurities and troubles in dealing with reality and surroundings. I would imagine that Kaufman had a lot of fun churning this one out, possibly even thinking it might be improbable it might even get made. Luckily, it's directed by Gondry with his mix of fantastical visual energy and a real sense of humility with the absurd material. It doesn't have the same power as in his best work either, but as a first feature film it could've been a lesser endeavor too. Human Nature ends on an (ironically?) unique ending, where Puff does what we'd expect him to do, but then maybe not, and it caps off what has led up to it- a weird little ball of comic-curiosity that should please fans of Robbins (very funny in his awkward doctor character), Arquette, and especially Ifans.

I am not happy that Human Nature is as underrated as it is. Charlie Kaufman is, bar none, the most brilliant screenwriter in the world. In the world. His other films being contemporary classics, this as well as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind are not considered amongst Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Confessions is in my top 10 favorite movies, and Human Nature does not leave anything to be desired. In any Kaufman script, you will find a tremendously acute portrayal of life through the perspective of a great thinker. Kaufman has more depth, more fixed mental clarity, than most other writers in general. Human Nature, while being the only one of his movies that is a straight comedy, is no different in that respect.It is fantastically entertaining as a comedy, keen as a social observation, and its cast provides performances that are among the most intriguing, sensitive, hilarious and arresting of their careers, subtle or not. Michel Gondry, the director, is pre-Eternal Sunshine, and is perhaps still honing his craft in terms of making a feature-length film. Eternal Sunshine is his masterpiece, but directorially, Human Nature is part of the latter stages of his warm-up period.Human Nature is another one of those buried treasures that flies below the radar, and when people hear of it or see an ad for it, they mistake it for one of the movies that deservedly flies below the radar, waving it off saying, "Well, if it's not that big a hit, then it must not be that good." Don't make the mistake of passing this one up. It is one of the most inventive and intelligently funny comedies you'll ever see.